Making Jim Crow Again

Michael Bloomberg raised $16 million to help re-disenfranchised Florida voters pay the poll tax imposed on them by Ron DeSantis and the Tallahassee Trumpites. Not sure why he’s not spending his own money, but good as far as it goes. Still, whenever a disproportionately minority population is given access to the ballot a rat signal goes off in the Florida Attorney General’s Office:

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody on Wednesday called for an investigation into an effort backed by Mike Bloomberg to help restore the voting rights of thousands of felons ahead of the November election.

The former New York City mayor partnered with the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition to help raise at least $16 million for felons to pay off outstanding legal fines and fees in order to regain the right to vote. The effort is targeting around 32,000 former prisoners who owed less than $1,500 in restitution fees and had already registered to vote.

“Today, I sent a letter to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Federal Bureau of Investigation into potential violations of election laws,” Moody said in a statement on Wednesday. “And I have instructed the Statewide Prosecutor to work with law enforcement and any Statewide Grand Jury that the Governor may call.”

While she does not explicitly call for an investigation into Bloomberg himself, her letter to the two agencies cites a Washington Post article on his involvement. She said that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis asked her to review the matter.

Needless to say, in addition to being straight out of the Jim Crow playbook in its own right this completely contradicts the argument the Republicans on 11CA pretended to believe when they upheld the poll tax in the first place:

If I understand the state of Florida's position here, it is: "These fines have nothing to do with voting, so they can't be a poll tax. But if you help people pay them off, you're interfering illegally in an election." https://t.co/s6DFO3e2Cu— Jesse Walker (@notjessewalker) September 23, 2020

The neoconfederates!